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It Follows
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| Year: |
2014
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Director: |
David Robert Mitchell
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| Stars: |
Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Bailey Spry, Debbie Williams, Ruby Harris, Linda Boston, Leisa Pulido, Ingrid Mortimer, Alexyss Spradlin, Mike Lanier, Ele Bardha, Joanna Bronson, Erin Stone
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| Genre: |
Horror |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 2 votes) |
| Review: |
Near where Jay Height (Maika Monroe) lives there has been a mysterious death when a girl ran out of her house one night and ended up on the shore of one of Michigan's lakes, called her father to apologise for everything bad she'd ever said about him, and was found the next morning dead, her body horribly twisted. This doesn't bother Jay unduly, she's a typical nineteen-year-old looking for love and wants to try with Hugh (Jake Weary), so they head off to a revival cinema to catch a movie; while in the queue, she passes the time by suggesting they play a game she used to play with her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) where you guess the person they're thinking of and would swap places with. But then Hugh spots someone Jay cannot see...
It Follows did a bit of following itself, following a trend for some highly regarded horrors and thrillers to look back at what had happened in those genres during the late nineteen-seventies and eighties, down to such details as the camerawork (very John Carpenter) and score (Rich Vreeland went above and beyond the call of duty here with his synths), emulating them to put a fresh spin on what had become clichés come the nineties. These could have been accused of putting new wine in old bottles, so to speak, but they were responded to very well by those old enough to recall seeing the inspirations first time around, and those younger audiences who would be approaching these ideas fairly fresh; although there were always going to be naysayers regarding any horror movie, this did pick up a lot of respect.
David Robert Mitchell was the brains behind it, having directed a teen drama a while before that was well thought of but barely seen, so evidently he opted to conjure up interest in his oeuvre by diving into the chiller arena and putting a scary spin on his previously non-supernatural cinematic concerns. Rather than being some borderline objectionable Larry Clark or David Hamilton who took their interest in young bodies to uneasy to watch degrees, Mitchell was keener to create believable personalities and then have them plonked down in the middle of a shocker crisis, and that paid off, Jay and company were indeed likeable and convincing as who they were meant to be, maybe because aside from the various setpieces the bits in between were low key and true to life.
As true as you could imagine someone would react when an unstoppable monster pursued them at walking pace relentlessly, meaning no matter where you fled this thing would be on its way, a pleasingly simple idea that operated in perfect nightmare logic (Wes Craven and James Cameron were surely an influence). One neat aspect was that when the potential victim was able to see them, not only would nobody else be aware of the entity, but it would appear as different people, often in states of undress or showing the effects of recent violence - its giant incarnation is especially alarming - before catching up with their target and putting them to gruesome death. And what could they have possibly done to deserve that treatment? If you'd seen Scream then you'd have a clue - they weren't listening to their parents (who weren't saying much by this stage, perhaps given up long ago).
Basically, have sex and die, and Mitchell kept it as unadorned as that, with the following creature a form of sexually transmitted disease that punished you in a way that guilt over so much as entertaining sexual thoughts that could stay with many from puberty well into the rest of their lives manifested in this extreme fashion, another pointer to how potent that horror flick trope was, and continued to endure even past the era that it really came into its own. The film resisted examining this too closely, so that it didn't turn into a tract or thesis, and it was true it could have done with a tad more self-awareness from either the script or translating that to the characters, but then again that could break the curious spell Mitchell cast. If anything, he could have made a lot more to this, but perhaps we should credit him with not overthinking his material, and if it could have done with at least one more fright sequence then what was there did impress if you were willing to give its concept a chance, even if it seemed more complicated than it played out. Also, doesn't Maika ever wear shoes?
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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